4 December 2012

Learning

I was chatting
away to a girl at work this morning. She looked exhausted and I asked why. She
told me that it was exam time. She is studying part time at University and she told
me that she has been burning the midnight oil studying and cramming. She told
me that she was endeavouring to to stuff her brain with facts that she might be
examined on.

I remember such
times even though they were long ago. I asked her whether she enjoyed acquiring
knowledge and learning new things. She looked aghast and shocked and horrified.
Her answer was an emphatic 'No".

When I pushed
further, trying to find out why she would work so hard for something that that
bought no enjoyment, she looked puzzled and confused. She looked bamboozled.
She is young and inexperienced in life. Puzzlement is a common expression of
youth these days when asked questions of substance - as is bamboozlement.

After a while
she told me that doing well in her exams would make her parents happy and it
would get her a promotion at work then she would be paid more. It was therefore
learning for others and not for herself. I thought this was strange.

However who am
I to judge?

I have
forgotten pretty much all that I learnt at school and University and most of
what I learnt isn't relevant to what I do now. In my career or in my life.

It never
really was.

Studying was
more of a discipline and that is a good thing. Formal education rarely teaches
one how to connect with people or how to communicate. Perhaps some courses do
but not the one's that I took.

Learning - as
an adult - needs to be enjoyable and it needs to be attached to desire. There
are of course fundamentals for children such as reading and writing and establishing
a moral code. Developing minds need to be taught the difference between what is
right and what is wrong. This learning continues throughout adulthood and we
have the capacity to learn something new every day.

I look to the
great philosophers for their perspective on this and this concept of learning
and how it ties in with the acquisition of Wisdom. I seek out the views of
Writers and Poets and Artisans and Eminem.

Will the real
Slim Shady please stand up. Please stand up.

E.M Forster
wrote:

“Spoon
feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”

Nicely
said E.M.

Natalie
Portman agrees and penned:

“I
don't love studying. I hate studying. I like learning. Learning is
beautiful.”

Heed
this my Singaporean friend.

Da
Vinci had a few crackers that are real pearls of wisdom:

“The
knowledge of all things is possible” he wrote and:

“Learning
never exhausts the mind.”

The
gentle and more humble Mahatma Gandhi says much the same thing with great
humility and hubris:

“The
expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about
nothing.”

I
love this. Knowing everything about nothing.

The
genius Albert Einstein wrote:

“Wisdom
is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

I
would never argue against Albert. He was a very smart cookie.

My
favorite life philosopher, Czeslaw Milosz, described learning as:

"
.... to believe you are magnificent. Then to gradually to discover that
you are not magnificent. This is enough labor for one human life.”

Sophocles
wrote:

“A
man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must unbend his
mind.”

I
am going to try and explain these thoughts and concepts to my exhausted
Singaporean friend.